MIT researchers tested the ‘sensing skin’ by attaching it to the underside of a concrete beam, then applying enough force to cause tiny cracks to form in the beam under one patch of the skin.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), in 2009,  assigned a grade of “D” to the overall quality of infrastructure in the United States, saying that ongoing evaluation and maintenance of structures was necessary to improve that grade. Since then, federal stimulus funds have made it possible for communities to repair some infrastructure, but high-tech, affordable methods for continual monitoring remain in their infancy. Instead, most evaluation of bridges, dams, schools and other structures is still done by visual inspection, which is slow, expensive, cumbersome and in some cases, dangerous.

Continue reading… “‘Sensing skin’ for concrete would detect tiny cracks”